


Midnight Rambles **BEING REWRITTEN**

by orphan_account



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-10-04 20:12:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20476814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When Henrik gets a call at midnight, he never expects the emotional baggage on the other end.---Edit: this is being rewritten so stay tuned for that (this one is REALLY old now)





	1. 1

Henrik sat on the sofa with a book in his lap and a cup of coffee in his hands. Yes, it may have been extremely late at night, but he didn’t mind. The mindless thoughts that circled the doctor’s head could be obscure and required a lot of attention to maintain, and he didn’t get that chance often. 

Nothing felt better than a few hours of perfunctory nothing. No doctor duties, no operations, no things that needed to be done. But most importantly: No Anti. None of that mania-filled glitch to bother his family, his friends. All was well in the calm sea of thoughts and warm numbness. 

Then his phone rang. 

It vibrated in small bursts, the odd sensation making him jump as he fumbled around the depths of his jean pockets. Nobody should’ve been calling at that hour, much less awake. Worry settled in immediately when he read the name that displayed: 

Chase.

Crying immediately filled the other end, sending Henrik’s heart into a spasm and his head into an array of overlapping panic.

“Chase? Chase are you there? This better not be some sick jo-” 

“I-I’m so sorry,” 

The small voice crack accompanying hysterical sobs left no room for interpretation. His voice was practically incomprehensible with more spews of stuttered speech lingered on the end of   
the line. Henrik just listened on the sofa, his leg bouncing anxiously.

“S-seventeen days, Hen.” 

Chase broke into a more frenzied rant, going off in a slur about nothing comprehensible. All the words morphed into one long phrase with empty meaning. 

“Chase, where are you right now?” 

Henrik stood and paced as time passed. The absence of a response lingered on Chase’s side of the phone. 

“Chase, are you th-” 

“Apartment...c-c-cold…”

The crying was muffled into a more manageable heave of breaths. The soft sound of Henrik’s footsteps was lost within the foggy haze. No calm. No fear. Just numb. Numbness in the most negative, wretched form. The dissociation with reality for moments at a time to flicker between reasoning and panic, then back again. 

“What do you mean by seventeen days?” He asked, throwing open the door of his dwelling out into the pouring midnight rain. 

No answer. Just crying. 

“Chase, I’m coming to get you. Don’t leave your apartment.” 

“No...no please don’t. I-I’m f-f-fucking fine.” 

The hostility caught the doctor off guard, his body tensing when he sat in his car. Chase wasn’t like this. Chase was never like this...unless?

***  
It felt like an eternity of knocking before Henrik finally decided to open the apartment door himself. He tried to get more out of Chase during the car ride, but nothing worked. Just sobbing. Incomprehensible blubbering that lead nowhere but the call getting cut short by signal problems.

The creakiness of the apartment door startled him, even though he knew it shouldn’t have. It was like a horror movie; the apartment was echoey. The area felt a lot larger in the darkness, when he barely recognized any of the stuff he stubbed his toe on or ran into. 

He called out Chase’s name, hoping there would be some sort of response from the empty shell of the home. Feeling his hand against the wall, he searched for a lightswitch. Nothing but the rough texture pricked his fingertips. 

Approaching where he believed the hallway to be, he stopped. A bright light illuminated down the corridor. Soft sniffles slowly reverberated in an enveloping cocoon down the never-ending path of dread he walked down. He was shaking to the core, knowing there was no reason to be. Still, he felt as if something was going to jump out at him the moment he entered the heavy-lit room at the end. 

He knew Chase must’ve been in there, the crying was the giveaway. Nobody cried like he’d heard Chase cry. Chase cried pain. He cried with the passion of a thousand clouds pouring hail into an empty road. He cried disgust and rage with every second that passed. He cried loud and low and frenzied and every other word to describe mere panic. 

Henrik immediately identified the light source as the bathroom when he got close enough to the door. The crying was switching between a soft wheeze and exasperating gasps for air with barely an inbetween. 

“Chase?”

He slowly pushed the door open, blinded by the sudden brightness of the light. There, on the floor, was Chase Brody. His cap was off, misplaced from the scene. His body swayed even though he was slouched over an object in his hand. A picture frame, filled with photos of his family that shined brighter than ever before, and a bottle of whiskey that was 3 quarters of the way empty. 

So that’s what he meant by seventeen days…

Henrik’s heart sank when he kneeled down in front of the disheveled form in front of him. Chase really did this to himself? 

“Y’know, I never really got why some o’ ya even care.” 

Chase lazily looked up from the picture frame, his eyes puffy and his nose red. The bloodshot tint didn’t help his appearance either. 

“Chase...I didn’t know-” 

“‘Course ya didn't. You don’ know, Stacy doesn’t…” 

He paused, his eyes welling up with tears again, the soft croak in his voice noticeable with every sound.

“Stacy took them away from me...” He slouched, his breathing a heavy and low rumble in his chest.

“I...I can’t do this anymore…” 

Chase’s expression switched from hostile to a blank stare quicker than any time before. Alcohol did that to him, as Henrik had known, but didn’t expect the frustration to disappear like it had.

He took another swig, but Henrik snatched it once it was almost gone. Nothing hurt more than to see a life draining away from the vulnerable, unrecognizable figure in front of him. 

“Chase...chase what happened? You were doing so well and-” 

“I used to think love was real, y’know?” 

Henrik flinched at the answer, his mind attentive and his interest piqued. His head tilted to the side, much like a dog begging for something. 

He was begging. Begging for an elaboration, begging for some form of answer to Chase’s problems. 

“I used to think I could be happy. Th-that I could be someone special.” Chase rubbed his eyes, staggering to finish his words coherently. 

“Sh-she stole it away from me. Stacy stole...everything from me.” 

Henrik’s expression softened as his form caved. No amount of prescriptions or emergency diagnosis could fix this. Nothing he was trained to do could fix this.

“I’m so sorry Chase…” 

Chase reclaimed the bottle from the doctor’s hand and drained the fluid dry. Nothing stopped him, it was pointless. The last bottle in the apartment, most likely. 

Tossing it to the side, Chase ruffled the disordered mop of hair on his head. Nothing about him looked stable. Yes, it could’ve been the swaying, or the bags under his eyes, but something more was off. 

“Why didn’t you say h-how bad it was?” 

Chase turned away, tugging down on the sleeves of his shirt and staring at the ground as if it had a map to every answer in existence. His eyes watered, but his expression didn’t change. Just a blank stare into the tile floor.

“Scared... I was scared of you.” 

Henrik was taken aback. He asked the question hoping for no answer but got a punch to the face. He wasn’t angry, wasn’t sad, wasn’t...anything other than shocked. He expected the wave of emotions to come gradually, but they never hit. Just the stagnant feeling of surprise he didn’t know how to get rid of. 

“Why me?” his voice a cacophony of sounds in a moment of frustration, “Why be scared of me? What have I done to make you afraid of me, Chase?”

He could feel his own eyes dull, his own voice change pitch into a louder yell with every fragment of a thought.

“I...I-”

“You what? You made some sort of concept in that head of yours, and turned me into a monster? Is that how it is? Do you believe me guilty for all of this? Please, Chase, just tell m-” 

“I didn’t want you to…to hurt me.” 

Chase’s lips quivered, though nothing else about his expression changed. It was as if he was a statue or a painting of some sort. He was cowering, scrunched back into the wall with his knees to his chest and his head low. Not a glance was shared between the two. Only his own violent shaking made him look at all alive.

It was Henrik’s main cue to back down. To give the other man as much space as possible. Although the bathroom was small, he scooted back as far as he could. 

“Why would I ever hurt you?” 

“I...I don’t know…It’s just--” 

“Has anyone ever even hit you before?” 

Chase responded with a silent worried look. His mouth may have moved, but no sound made it past the static haze. 

“Who hurt you, Chase?”

Nothing. Nothing but the lost-in-thought emotional stare into the void. An uneasy feeling rose in Henrik’s chest, but he ignored it as best he could. Nothing felt more wrong than that moment. No feeling separate from another.

“What are you keeping from me?” He inched closer, careful not to raise his voice or make sudden movements. The fragility of the form in front of him was out of place. 

Chase rolled up his sleeve, revealing a large bruise on his bicep. He winced whenever his fingers brushed against it. It looked fresh, the purple-blue colors dark and prominent on the pale skin. Tears began leaking out of his eyes, but no other sound was made. 

“Did...did Stacy do this?” 

Chase shook his head and mumbled something. 

“What?” Henrik inched closer. 

“It was An-“ 

Chase stopped, wide-eyed, staring at the bathroom door. The sea of darkness beyond put him in a frenzied trance. 

Henrik turned his head the same direction but found nothing there. Even if he stuck his head out of the doorway, nothing could be seen. Just an empty hallway. 

“Chase, when was the last time you slept?” 

“Thursday...no wait—Friday? I don’t...I don’t remember.” 

At the minor mention of sleep, Chase’s eyes grew heavier. The dulled shade made him look lifeless, as if there was really nothing beyond the mask of a face he put on.   
He untensed, he wearily leaning his head on the wall. Despite the tile bathroom not being a comfortable napping spot, he found a way to make it work nonetheless. Before Henrik could even comprehend what was happening, Chase was passed out. 

Henrik sighed, preparing himself for having to carry the dead weight to his room (or the couch, if he could find it). 

“What am I gonna do with you in the morning?”   
***


	2. Chapter 2

“I should get dumbass tattooed on my forehead.” Chase mumbled to himself, rubbing his temples. Getting out of bed in the morning wasn’t the easiest, but he managed most days.

Today wasn’t like most days.

Today was filled with a lack of memory, lack of understanding, lack of...well, anything he wanted to have. He was lucky that a glass of water was left on his nightstand; his throat was dry when he first woke up. 

He barely remembered the last time he slept. It could’ve been days, or weeks, or months. It felt like years when he woke up that morning. The sweet sigh of relief when he felt even the slightest bit of rested since forever. 

The only thing ruining the moment was the killer headache. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had them before, but he didn’t recognize why this one was so bad. He stumbled out of bed like a child learning to walk, his muscles were sore, but everything else was in place. It was difficult to be optimistic when little knives pricked at his bones. 

His socks padded the hardwood floor to the main hallway, the soft sound scraping against his ears. Even the sunlight from the windows was a bit much for him, but he was working on the adjustment. The world felt numb, flowing past him as if he was standing directly in the center of the ocean, feet dangling into the depths below. It was almost soothing. 

“Oh, you’re awake.” 

Chase jumped at the voice; he hadn’t even realized he entered his kitchen area. It should’ve surprised him when he saw Henrik in an apron making eggs in his own home, but it really didn’t anymore. There was no discerning difference between reality and fiction anymore. 

“When did you show up?” 

“Oh, right…” Henrik sighed and rubbed his eyes, “You dont remember last night, do you?”

“Did we fuck or somethin’?” 

Henrik let out a small laugh, but shook his head. The sad smile plastered on his face left room for interpretation—much more than Chase wanted. 

“What’s the last thing you remember from last night? Anything at all?” 

Chase shrugged from the question, grabbing his hat he must’ve misplaced from the counter and putting it over the wild frenzy on his head. The most he could think of was an empty bathroom floor, but that couldn’t help much. Even that vision was unclear, everything was so distorted it felt like it would much rather be a dream than something that actually happened. 

Henrik sighed at the lack of verbal response, going back to the pancakes. They were finished within minutes of awkward silence, the tenseness of the situation leaving too much thinking time for either of them. 

“So...why are you in my house again?” 

“You called around midnight last night, so I came over. I wanted to make sure you were alright after you fell asleep, and it was pretty dangerous to drive home that late.” 

“Did you get any sleep, you look exhausted my dude.” Chase yawned quietly under his breath.

“Not much, but I assume you didn’t get much either.”

Henrik shuffled over to the other end of the counter, fixing the two a plate of whatever he had made. He was relatively silent, the tiny clinks of the plates the only sound other than Chase’s occasional awkward attempt at small talk. They both sat at the small coffee table in the living room on opposite ends. Chase didn’t touch much food. 

“Does your arm feel any better? It looked pretty rough last time I saw it.” 

Chase flinched. He had almost completly forgotten about it. Almost. It still tingled slightly, but he ignored little aches and pains he got mostly. He wouldn’t want to worry anybody, right? 

“Nah dude, it’s fine. Just a bit of a scratch, really. Can’t feel that shit, y’know?” 

“Really? Last time I checked...it was literally purple.” 

“So what, bruises are purple. Or is this some doctor thing I’m too dumb to know about?” 

Henrik sighed (he did that quite often at Chase’s tomfoolery). Being a doctor had its perks, but it also meant dealing with the stuck-up attitude of defendant patients. Chase was currently acting like one. 

“Lift your sleeve. I want to see it.” 

“It’ll be fine dude, trust me.” 

“I’m a doctor, Chase. I can tell when things are wrong.” 

“Oh really? You didn’t catch my shit for a year and a half-“

“Excuse me? You really think I’m that stupid to the point of me ignoring your blatant-as-shit problems? You can’t lie to me Chase. Really.” 

“When did lying come in here?”

“When you lied to me. You lied to me about your problems, you lied about the bruise, you lied about Stacy, you-“ 

“It’s because I was scared, alright?!”

Chase yelled, aggressively standing up in a defensive position. An emotional outburst. Upsetting tears pricked at his eyes, but we’re held down by his own clouded mentality. This wasn’t him. This wasn’t supposed to be him. 

Chase was broken. Henrik could see that now, clear as day. 

“Have I ever hurt you?” Henrik asked quietly, placing his hands in full view on the tabletop. 

“N-no...no no no. I’m not scared of you it’s…it’s just…” 

“Has...Anti been messing with you?” 

Chase went quiet and his expression softened from angry to numb to distraught in a number of seconds. He caved in, tears falling to the ground in heaping streams. 

”I-I didn't mean to...to yell like that. I’m s-s-sorry…”

He repeated over and over again his apologies, aggressively drying his eyes with his shirt sleeve. He wouldn’t even look Henrik in the eye, but it was better that way. The continuous delirium spreading through the trembling form was painful to stare at. 

Henrik stood, making sure to make himself look less threatening. He stepped forwards, extending his arms and wrapping his arms around the quivering shell. Chase didn't reciprocate, but instead melted into the taller man’s chest, placing his tear-filled face onto the other’s shoulder. 

”Shh...it’ll be alright now. He’s not here now.” 

Henrik rubbed his fingers in circles along Chase’s back, feeling the shaky breath sync with his. He may not have had all of the answers, or any real form of rhyme or reason for what he was doing, but it quelled the fear. It numbed the pain as much as he knew how to do.

And that was good enough for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone on Tumblr who gave me support for this one! My URL: deadlydevine.tumblr.com


End file.
